Liber Loagaeth Manuscript: What Sloane MS 3189 Actually Contains

The folio range is larger than a table count

The British Library places the work at folios 1r–65r. It says angelic conversations and visions largely take the form of letters and numbers filling 49-row by 49-column grids from folio 10r onward. Folios before that point are therefore part of the described object too: the catalogue notes a later title page at 1r and William Shippen’s note on the manuscript arrangement at 2r. A page count derived from a modern list of grids should not be confused with the library’s foliation or the total physical extent of the bound volume. The catalogue also lists paper leaves measuring 355 by 269 millimetres. These material details help explain why a reduced web transcription cannot carry everything a manuscript page communicates.

Who wrote it, and who later arranged it?

The catalogue attributes the 1583 transcription to Kelley. That attribution is narrower than saying Kelley authored every idea in the volume, and it differs from assigning the bound object wholly to Dee’s hand. It also records later interventions: a title in a modern hand, Shippen’s arrangement note, and Frederic Madden’s notes. The volume passed through collectors including Sir John Cotton, Elias Ashmole, Shippen, and Hans Sloane. Copies, labels, and collectors’ notes can change how an editor reconstructs order or names a text; provenance therefore bears directly on interpretation. The library lists Sloane MS 2599 as a later related copy, possibly by Ashmole, distinct from the 1583 transcription.

The first leaf is not an ordinary pair of grids

The opening leaf changes the book’s textual register. In Peterson’s edition, most of the face called Leaf 1a is reconstructed from Sloane MS 3188 because Sloane MS 3189 preserves only its final row in that position. Its long lines also carry pronunciation variants recorded elsewhere in Dee’s conference book. An Ashmole note describes the opposite face, Leaf 1b, as forty rows in which each cell contained a whole word, followed by nine rows of single letters. Those word-filled cells had to be written at length because they would not fit the little squares. The opening therefore combines spoken word sequences, pronunciation evidence, and a partial alphabetic grid before the later one-character matrices begin. Treating both faces as two uniform 49 by 49 squares erases a deliberate change of format inside the work.

The internal sequence moves from prose to two sizes of table

Whitby’s manuscript inventory separates three blocks that a generic “49 tables” label conceals. He describes an opening series of forty-nine prose units occupying ten folios, then ninety-five filled small square tables and two empty small tables spread across forty-eight leaves, followed by four tables drawn at twice the small format across eight leaves. He calls the prose series the first Enochian table because it would not fit comfortably inside one square. This is a claim about the work’s textual organization: verbal material opens the sequence, repeated matrices dominate its middle, and enlarged tables change the scale at the end. It also explains why counting only square diagrams misses content while counting every written face as an identical table overstates uniformity.

Worked comparison: Leaf 1b and Leaf 2a

Leaf 1b begins “Oxar varmol pan sampas” and continues for most of its rows as words rather than isolated characters. Leaf 2a is headed “alla opnay qviemmah” and then presents a square whose rows are split into single characters. These are not decorative variants of one layout. On 1b, the unit that fills a place is usually a word; on 2a, the place itself controls the reading because each cell holds one character. The comparison changes what can responsibly be extracted: a word break on 1b belongs to the recorded text, while a word assembled across 2a depends on a chosen path through the lattice. No English translation accompanies either face, so a phrase claimed from the later square needs an explicit extraction rule rather than an assumed left-to-right sentence.

What a modern transcription changes

Peterson’s edition makes the tables searchable and relates early portions to Sloane MS 3188. His introduction warns that rows were not always easily reconciled with the expected forty-nine places, and that correction marks and renumbering were part of the textual history. He supplies leaf, row, and column numbers for navigation even though those labels are absent from the original manuscript. He also distinguishes characters that Kelley’s hand can make hard to separate, including u from n and several similar letter forms. A modern block of evenly spaced characters can therefore make an unstable line appear definitive. The British Library currently labels the digitized images of Sloane MS 3189 unavailable, so the transcript is an editorial model of the page rather than a substitute for its spacing, corrections, and writing direction.

Where the neighboring books begin

The catalogue for Sloane MS 3188 describes Dee’s earlier conferences from December 1581 through May 1583. Sloane MS 3191, a distinct manuscript, holds the Angelical Keys received in 1584 and the Liber Scientiae collected in 1585. The three shelfmarks are connected historically but cannot be collapsed into one “original Enochian manuscript.” Leaf, side, page, and grid totals create a separate counting problem, while the later Calls raise a different question about Loagaeth. Both topics depend on the distinction between the physical records and reconstructed occult systems.

Sources and witness notes

1. British Library, Sloane MS 3189 catalogue ↗Shelfmark, folios, Kelley attribution, physical description, provenance, and current image availability.
2. British Library, Sloane MS 3188 catalogue ↗The earlier conference record; distinct from the bound Loagaeth volume.
3. British Library, Sloane MS 3191 catalogue ↗The 1584 Keys and later Liber Scientiae material in a separate manuscript.
4. Christopher L. Whitby, John Dee’s Actions with Spirits (PhD thesis, 1982) ↗Scholarly manuscript study and transcription of Sloane MS 3188, with a material inventory and analysis of Loagaeth and the later Keys.
5. Joseph H. Peterson, edited transcription of Liber Loagaeth ↗A modern editorial transcription with an introduction explaining textual and numbering problems; editorial work remains copyrighted.